Scrim—Vaughn Davis Jr.

Davis chooses to express feeling rather than identifiable forms, moving beyond ideas of artistic representation, conceiving the work of art instead as a trace of communication between him and the world. His abstractions embrace simplicity while simultaneously folding in complex, layered meaning. He would like his work to be viewed as visual struggles, products of labor, and objects of time. Shaped from the individual experience of everyday life, and saturated with vivid layers of paint, the saturated canvas reflects inspirations and experimentations, integrating personal stories and family histories. The tearing and distressing of his paintings are both process and social protest. The distress of the materials and deconstructed painting reference daily struggles, while the final work is a torn metaphor, questioning its existence. Ultimately, each canvas is a documentation of its making and an embodiment of the time, space, and emotion created by the very body and movement of the artist himself.